How to disable Security Warnings and enable content?

Question

I have both Excel 365 for Mac, and for Windows.

I share excel files between the two different computers and work on them from whichever computer I need to.

When I create a PQ in the windows computer referring to a table within the same excel file, and open the same file with the mac, I always get the security warning, and have no option to set the file as trusted.

How can I either set the file as trusted, or just remove the security warning notice all together?

Answer 1

Hi longstreathm,

Sorry for the inconvenience the problem caused for you.

The Message Bar displays security alerts when there is potentially unsafe active content (such as macros, ActiveX controls, data connections and so on) in the file that you want to open.

Based on my research and test, currently, there is no out of box way to disable this security warning on Excel for Mac.

We recommend you feedback this requirement to Excel Team. You can open Excel and click the Character(Help improve Office?) icon on the upper-right corner, click Tell us what can be better and write this query. Microsoft is committed to continuously improving your experience with our products.

And I found a thread which has the same problem with you, you could try the steps in this thread as a workaround.

Appreciate your understanding.

Best regards,

Jazlyn

Answer 2

Thanks for the response Jazlyn.

Reporting anything to Microsoft via Help improve Office does not seem to do much. I think that the Mac Excel team must be very small as nothing that I have ever reported to date has ever been addressed. There are so many inequalities between excel windows and excel mac, it is incredible that 365 for Mac can be marketed as being capable of giving the "full Microsoft Office experience".

The 2011 post you mentioned does not help, as my issue is that I cannot get excel to recognise that the external data is from a power query that is part of the file that I am opening. I created the query and use it for a pivot. The query uses a table within the same spreadsheet, as its data source, so there is NO external data.